Will there ever be a pro sports team in ABQ? (Albuquerque: home, tax)

[Cathy4017]

Originally Posted by mortimer

salcisne pointed out:

> We have a lack of sports facilites. A pro sport to survive must
> have the revenues like parking, concessions etc...

In order to have a facility, it will require arm-twisting the taxpayer
in Albuquerque to build a multi-hundred-million dollar edifice that
wealthy franchise owners can use to install luxury box seats, bars,
and other foo foo stuff.

I love the fact that we can watch professional sports from a distance
in Phoenix, Denver, and Dallas without all the accompanying crapola
of overpaid professional athletes living among us.

AMEN to that one!! That is one thing I absolutely do NOT miss AT ALL.

Give me the comfort of my own livingroom/couch and instant replays....to a live game with all the traffic, hassle, et al.....

[observe]

Originally Posted by lukeache

I like Albuquerque Pachucos, I even made a logo and sent it to the mayor of Albuquerque. Go PACHUCOS!

What's your deal with Albuquerque, do you have some kind of inferiority complex or something?
If you hated it here so much, why do you post here.....no one here wants to read your elitest junk!!!
Your just a classless jerk!!!

[desert sun]

I wanna see a unique name,not like the new high school mascots the hawks and the jaguars,they didnt give much thought to those.

[ABQConvict]

Originally Posted by abqsunport

For names...maybe the Albuquerque Nukes

Ha! I love it. Very un-PC, but appropriate nonetheless. Thanks for making me laugh out loud.

Frankly, I miss the Dukes. Classy name, historically relevant. I must say I hate the "Iso-dopes" (the name, not the team. Go Isotopes!).



ABQConvict

[ABQConvict]

Originally Posted by observe

What's your deal with Albuquerque, do you have some kind of inferiority complex or something?
If you hated it here so much, why do you post here.....no one here wants to read your elitest junk!!!
Your just a classless jerk!!!

Get a sense of humour. I think luke has explained his/her (not sure) position and while it may not meet your standards of political correctness, it is pretty much factually correct.

What is wrong with pachucos anyway?


ABQConvict

[lukeache]

Originally Posted by observe

What's your deal with Albuquerque, do you have some kind of inferiority complex or something?
If you hated it here so much, why do you post here.....no one here wants to read your elitest junk!!!
Your just a classless jerk!!!

I love Albuquerque and New Mexico like I have said many times. The pachuco thing was a joke. Geez, people can't take a joke anymore, everything has to be so serious and politically correct these days . I post here because New Mexico is the only state that has fascinated me and continues to fascinate me for the last 10 years. Can't say the same about the other 49 states. Now, I feel like Albuquerque deserves a NBA team more than anything. Since I moved to ABQ, I was always shocked by how loyal and supportive Lobos fans are. People in Albuquerque loves their Lobos, so I am sure a NBA team would be very welcome in ABQ.

[AndyJ]

Originally Posted by lukeache

People in Albuquerque loves their Lobos, so I am sure a NBA team would be very welcome in ABQ.

Welcome yes, successful no. There are not enough people in the Albuquerque MSA to support any professional sports team right now. End of story.

[AndyJ]

I prefer not to post conclusions without data/evidence to support what I believe, so here are a few reasons why I don't think Albuquerque will have an NBA team anytime soon (could do the same for MLB, NFL, etc., but this will suffice for now):

The top attendance of any NBA team belongs to the Detroit Pistons at about 22,000 people, which not so coincedentally is about the capacity that their court, the Palace at Auburn Hills, will hold. Almost encouragingly, the capacity of the Pit (University Arena) is 18,018 including standing room tickets. Relatively similar numbers, and again, encouraging as far as an NBA team doing well in ABQ, especially considering that Albuquerque's MSA is 800-900k, whereas Detroit's is 4.5 million.

Well...

Lobo men's basketball tickets are, at the most, $380.00. Pistons season tickets, at the cheapest, are $899.00. So would people here pay that much to see games? Probably a few would. Would every game sell out? Maybe at first. But what about after the first season? Therein lies the reason a pro sports team doesn't belong here (and I'm talking about the present - population growth is a factor that obviously can bring about changes of this sort). Albuquerque has the 75th largest MSA in the country. Detroit has the 6th. The nearest city in MSA ranking to ABQ that has an NBA team is Memphis, coming in at the 55th largest MSA. Pro sports depend on solid attendance records beyond the first season. With 900k people in the Albuquerque Metro Area, no team would be able to make enough money to remain a profitable venture. MLB teams have season attendance numbers well into the millions. This just isn't about to happen in New Mexico, with just over 2 million people living in the entire state.

So this is a summary of why I don't think Albuquerque's about to get a pro team anytime soon. There are at least a few more factors I could go into, but this will do for now. I hate to sound so cynical about it, but that's just the way I see it. A few folks have mentioned that they actually prefer not having a pro team here for one reason or another, and I must admit I tend to agree. Having grown up here, all the teams I cheer for are elsewhere, so I don't particularly care about getting any pro sports here. I do dearly miss the Dukes, which was a such a great name for our AAA team.

I got the numbers I cited from Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, some people don't think it's reliable, but if you go down to the sources index on any article you can usually find a credible link to where the author found the info), the Pistons site, the UNM athletics site, and:

http://ftp.fcc.gov/cgb/NumberPortability/msas.html

[desert sun]

lukeache- I dont get affended by your comments I know your just kidding,your thoughts about the rest of the state are your own opinions and thats fine,we cant all agree on everything in this forum ,however Ive even made jokes about the team name in the past such as the New Mexico DWI's, but I love this state as much as the next guy, its just a joke we all gotta have a sense of humor sometimes and stop acting so serious.

[abqsunport]

Originally Posted by AndyJ

Albuquerque has the 75th largest MSA in the country. Detroit has the 6th. The nearest city in MSA ranking to ABQ that has an NBA team is Memphis, coming in at the 55th largest MSA.

That interesting, because when I checked your source, I found that Albuquerque was the 61st Largest MSA. I also found that Detroit was only the 10th largest metro. Miami, D.C. and ATL are all larger . my source : Table of United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes it is true that New Mexico's population is only 2 million. But if you add El Paso (about an inch away from New Mexico-Texas Border) than you also add an additional 700,000+ people in their respective MSA.

Albuquerque's tourism numbers are also much greater than cities of similar size.

I'd say give it five years with the current growth, and some sort of Major League Professional Team will be looking at the Metro.